Homily 33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year A)

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2 Responses to “Homily 33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year A)”

Fr. Todd,
I am not a big fan of your homilies (there’s not mch good I could say about them, to be honest) and I am fairly certain you wouldn’t accept criticism (constructive or otherwise) very well; however, allow me the following abservations on content and style:
(1) good stories never require detailed explanation of the symbols empolyed in them (e.g., “in this story, x represents y,” etc.), only poor stories do; Jesus’ stories in the Gospeals are excellent in the extreme — your explanation of the symbols detracts from the power of the story. You need not do this — trust in the quality of the parable and the intelligence of your congregation. Part of the power of the parables is the way they strike to the heart without much explanation.
(2) there is a pervading negativity to this and many of your homilies — and misdirected negativity, here: Fr. Todd, these are the people who DO give at least an hour of their week to worship of God, they don’t need to hear complaints about those who don’t — they already know there are people who don’t come to Church, but they themselves don’t come to Church to have you tell them about it. People need to be lifted up, not crushed down.
(3) your repetitive ending, “the choice is yours, choose well,” is neither clever enough nor eloquent enough to bear weekly repitition. If the phrase is meant as a rhetorical device, it’s simply not working.
(4) I hope you listen to these homilies — the sing-song quality of your voice is very distracting at best and condescending at worst. I am sure that if you took homiletics in the seminary (to be honest, I have no idea if it’s considered important at the NAC, which is more concerned with cultivating bishops rahter than parish priests) this quality of your voice would have been pointed out and suggestions for improvement would have been made. Did you listen to those concerns at the time?
Again, Fr. Todd, I don’t imagine you’d appreciate any of this, but there you have it. God bless you.